


Seeing Things

by vtn



Category: Green Day, The Network (Band)
Genre: Anxiety Disorder, Hate Sex, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-10-11
Updated: 2006-10-11
Packaged: 2017-11-17 16:51:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/553770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vtn/pseuds/vtn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While on tour for Insomniac, Billie Joe starts seeing things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seeing Things

I'm seeing things again. They offer all kinds of explanations—I drink too much, I sleep too little, I should never have taken that LSD back in high school because who knows what it was laced with. I say I'll check myself out right after we get back.

"I mean it, you. The moment I step foot on California soil, I'm calling a shrink."

"I don't know." He props his feet up on the television set. "I think it keeps you interesting. And it's good, isn't it? It's too bad you can't share it with anyone."

"Maybe I don't want to share you. I share everything." I toss a Cheeto at him, watch him blink. "If I share you then _nothing_ belongs to me, so that could be causing it, right?"

"My _dear_ boy!" He feigns surprise. "Are you psychoanalyzing yourself?

"Look," he continues, shifting the topic, "The least you could do is give me a name. They always have names. 'I told me to do it' just doesn't have the same—the same _ring_ to it as, say, 'Uncle Johnny told me to do it' or, I don't know, ' _God_ told me to do it'." I look at him in his black Metallica T-shirt.

"What about 'the Devil made me do it'? Should I be calling you Satan now?" I roll my eyes. He scratches his chin, tilting back his head and stretching his reddish throat. It's hot in this little room. Too hot for two people to share it.

"Billie Joe, _everyone_ thinks he's Satan these days. It's just passé." He runs a hand through his hair. It's dark like mine, but he doesn't straighten it, he just lets the curls hang loose. He almost looks like a diminutive Greek god.

"Tyler Durden," I say with a laugh. "Same story, might as well have the same characters."

"You're not funny. In case you didn't notice, _you're_ the rebellious little shit who needs a punch in the teeth. _I'm_ the intelligent, rational one. Try again, dear." He picks up the Cheeto from the floor, twirls it in his fingers, and eats it, frowning in distaste. "This _thing_ isn't just disgusting; I also have to eat it with _your_ fucking teeth. Get some dental work or I'll bite you."

"You'll _bite_ me?"

"Sure! Even if no one else can see it, _you'll_ certainly _feel_ it." He smiles pleasantly. "I want a name, shithead. Give me a name and I'll give you a blowjob," he singsongs. "Who do you want to be, Billie Joe? Who would you be if you could escape your skin? This is your chance, you know."

"Wilhelm Fink." The words slip past my lips.

"Wilhelm…Fff _fink_!" He springs up from the chair he's sitting in and scampers over to the bed, climbing between my legs and nuzzling my thighs while I try to keep my thoughts from tangling. "I _love_ it. Fink." The numbers from my bedside clock reflect red in his dark pupils. "Fink."

He works my pants down from my hips, rubbing his lips together as he flicks his eyes to me. I place my hands on his shoulders, he wriggles, and I return his interested gaze. Not aroused, although I am. Just interested.

I can't keep my poker face, though, when his lips slip over my cock, smooth and practiced. When his tongue sweeps over my head, plays with my slit. When his hand slides up my thigh. I chew my lip.

"Relax," he croons, "I'll take good care of ya, baby."  


~

  
Mike is confounded when Billie disappears into the local library. Billie and libraries just don't mix. He's even more confounded when, after a careful investigation, he finds Billie curled up in a ball in one of the library's ragged armchairs, the DSM-IV resting on his legs and _Fight Club_ on the table next to him.

"Weird bird," says Mike, and he can swear Billie leaps about five inches into the air. He comes down shaking, rubbing at his arms and half-laughing, half-hyperventilating.

"Sorry, Mike. All this reading about schizophrenia's made me jumpy."

"And… _why_ exactly are you reading about schizophrenia? _Fight Club_ isn't schizophrenia anyway, it's dissociative identity disorder." Leaning in, he flicks Billie's forehead, something he used to do a lot when they were in high school.

"Shut up, Mister I-Got-My-Diploma." Billie scowls and starts flipping pages in the DSM. "I'm reading about schizo— _dissociative_ identity disorder because I like Chuck Palahniuk."

"And because you think you're going crazy."

"Michael."

Mike thinks there's got to be some pattern to when Billie calls him Mike and when he calls him Michael, but he has yet to figure it out.

"Michael," he continues, "Since when do I _not_ think I'm going crazy? Leave me alone, you're getting me all distracted and I don't get these big words anymore."

"Billie—”

"I said leave me alone. _Please_."

So Mike leaves Billie alone, but he talks to Tré and the crew anyway. They agree that they have to at least try to get through the tour, but then they're getting Billie help. Stat.  


~

  
Fink is holding Billie so hard by his hips that Billie thinks his skin is going to rupture and pull off underneath those pressing fingers. Oh yeah, and Fink is _fucking_ him too, just like he has been every night for the past couple weeks. Fucking him, riding his waist like it's going out of style, slamming him down into the bed over and over. They're blasting 80's metal tapes that Billie hasn't listened to since it was, well, the 80's. It's as good as soundproofing.

Billie comes; Fink pulls sharply out of him and licks Billie clean obligingly. Afterwards, Fink quietly jerks himself off in a corner while he reads to Billie out of the Gideon's Bible.

"By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return," Fink slurs. He doesn't change the tone in his voice at all as he continues, "Billie Joe, go into the other room because your friend Mike is having an anxiety attack and I'm sure he would like it if you turned down the Alice Cooper and went in there to hold his hand."

Billie stares off sullenly into space a little longer until the impact of what Fink's just told him hits him.

" _What_?"

"I have very good hearing. I just came—thanks for the fun, now go. Get your ass out. Do it while I'm still a sweetheart."

Billie obliges, shaking like fuck despite himself. He slips in the card key and pulls open the door to the next room, fearful of what he might find.

Mike is bent over himself on his bed, shaking and sobbing, breathing in harsh, wheezing pants. Billie is in a different world now than the one where he just had mind-blowing sex. He climbs up on the bed and wraps his arms around Mike, holds him tight until the attack blows over.

"It's okay, Mike." He runs his hand over Mike's hair again and again while Mike clings to his shirt and weeps softly. "We're gonna get you home. We're gonna go home."  


~

  
They call off the tour and it's like being weightless. Mike's panic disorder disappears, and strangely enough, Fink disappears too. Billie gets hooked on reading Palahniuk (again), and eventually they start talking about recording another album. Life goes on.  


~

  
In 2001, they decide it's time for a break. In 2003, they reconvene and figure they might as well record _something_ , so they start getting loaded and goofing off in the studio.

It becomes something of a routine. Get drunk, mess around with guitars, hate each other in the morning. It's like sex without the satisfaction. One night Billie announces he's had it and just _leaves_.  


~

  
The funny thing about New York City is that no matter when you go there, you always meet someone you know. I'm still running into friends by day, making phone calls by night, acting like this was all planned. Only Mike, Tré, and my wife know the truth, and all four of us are set on changing the truth to fit the story I'm telling everyone else. The only thing I can't give them is a date for when I come home, but Adrienne, genius woman that she is, figured out some sort of explanation I'm too drunk to even remember.

Wait—there's another thing I can't give them, which is the real reason I left. After the _Insomniac_ tour, I didn't get in touch with a shrink. Why should I have, if my reason to had disappeared?

"Well, for starters because mental illness stays with you forever," Fink reminds me, eyeing me smugly through the holes in the ski mask he's taken to wearing. "You can figure out what's causing it, you can get it under control—but you can't get rid of it. Of me."

"Too bad for me, I guess."

"Yes. Too bad for you. Poor baby Billie Joe, finally realizing money, friends, and fame aren't all they're cracked up to be, at least not when you're fucked up in the head." Fink makes a gun with his hand and pantomimes cocking it and blowing his brains out.

"I really don't need you here."

"Funny thing is? Of _course_ you need me here, you miserable shit." He climbs into my lap and kisses my face. " _Pretty_ little miserable shit." His hand dives down between my legs, rubbing at my groin and making me curl around him.

" _Please_ ," I whisper hoarsely, "Make me forget."

He just smiles and runs a hand through my hair as I slowly lose myself to the motions of his _other_ hand. If this is losing it, maybe I should never have had it in the first place.  


~

  
"So where do you _go_ anyway, when you go?" I ask him as we lie in bed, a foot apart, staring at the ceiling.

"You like acting like I'm a real person?"

"The idea of being fucked by something that doesn't exist is not something I want to wrap my mind around right now, thanks very much."

"Okay, fine." He shifts, and I have to grab a couple handfuls of comforter to keep him from pulling it off me. "I've been all around the world. I've been making some friends. It's been fun, but I know when I'm needed."

"I don't think I want to meet any friends of yours."

"No." He smiles wistfully and shakes his head. "But you won't need to meet them, so don't worry your pretty head."

"Fink?"

"Yes, Billie Joe?"

"I think I hate everyone."

"Don't _worry_. It's the human condition. Happens to everyone, eventually." He finally touches me, then, running his fingers along my face. He was wearing fingerless gloves when he came in, but now his hands are bare, soft except for a guitarist's calluses. I'm too tired to think about what it means.  


~

  
One night they watch as the office building lights go off and the nightclub lights go on. There's a pink glow coming in from a bar across the street, which has a logo of a woman in lingerie doing the Can-Can.

"When should I go home?" Billie asks, his eyes on Fink's warm fingers, laced as they are over Billie's bare stomach. "We’ve been here a month. A _month_."

"I was just waiting for you to ask, Billie. Honestly, I was. I've got big plans, and you, if I'm not mistaken, are formulating some."

"I _might_ be. Key word being 'might'." Billie lets his eyes go out of focus, watches all the lights turn into hexagons and compass roses. "I'm _scared_ to go home."

Fink doesn't reply, just shifts, nuzzling into the back of Billie's neck.

"We had some great sex tonight," he says finally. "I'm going to miss it."

"I'll visit," says Billie with a wry laugh. "Maybe send you flowers on your birthday."

"I'll call you when I have an address. We're still doing the paperwork for the place, and you know how it is with those filthy bastards in real estate." Billie almost wishes there were a reality where Fink was a living, breathing human being, someone who he could go visit when he wanted to and get rid of when he wanted to. He'd especially like it if he didn’t have to get blamed for everything Fink did. And he'd like to know for certain that the hands on his belly weren't a hallucination; weren't just his own hands.

"I have something for you," Fink says, interrupting Billie's thoughts. "Actually, I have two things for you, but one of them has a tag saying _Do Not Open Till Christmas_. Or thereabouts."

"You have something for me? Other than an affinity?"

"Big words, big words, Mister Armstrong," Fink chides. The next thing Billie knows, Fink is breathing hot on the back of his neck and sinking in his teeth. There's searing pain, and there's something wet—Billie realizes Fink is lapping up his blood. It doesn't end even when Billie cries out in protest. It ends when Fink wants it to.

"Hasta la vista, baby," Fink breathes in Billie's ear. "The plane ticket I bought you is on the dresser."  


~

  
They're sitting under a buzzing fluorescent light in the studio, silently challenging each other to endure it longer.

Tré gives in and throws his shoe at it. It goes out with a dying buzz and a shatter of glass. They duck and let out a simultaneous breath of relief.

"My _God_ , Billie Joe. A fucking _month_. Please tell me—tell me you're _okay_ ," Mike says, scooting his chair closer to Billie.

"I'm okay," says Billie, grinning—nervously, because he's still re-learning how to do it. "I promise, this time."

"So tell us," says Tré, leaning forward on his chair, hands gripping the edge of the seat from between his legs. "What did you do? Did you write songs? Get laid?" Tré wiggles his eyebrows. "We won't tell Adrienne."

Billie lets out a laugh that's louder than he wanted it to be.

" _Adrienne_! Adrienne knows _everything_! And Mike— _I_ know everything, too, so don't get all embarrassed. Adie and I talked on the phone once or twice. I knew what was going on at home, and I agreed to everything." Mike is blushing anyway, as he rubs at his forehead nervously.

"I want to know, though." Tré is persistent, catching Billie with his sharp stare. "What is the _everything_ Adrienne knows all about?"

"Well, uh." Billie hesitates. He runs a hand over the scabs on the back of his neck.

"You know," he begins, "I'm not sure you'd believe me if I told ya…"  



End file.
